


Interludes

by raedbard



Category: The West Wing
Genre: M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-07-21
Updated: 2008-07-21
Packaged: 2017-10-06 23:13:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,958
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/58783
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raedbard/pseuds/raedbard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Sam almost looks sad, wistful. Pushed up against the gaps in his life. His ambitions eroded into white spaces."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Interludes

**Author's Note:**

> Written for medland, as some compensation for a shitty few weeks.

The kindest word Toby can think of to describe the house is 'ramshackle'. A long broken porch running the breadth of the thing, its wood rotten and sand-filled, warped under the alternating attentions of water and intense heat; some windows with no glass at all (first floor front, left and right) and some with glass straining free of the frames (ground floor, front left); the door is slightly warped too, green paint cracking unappealingly.

The master of the house is pulling shingles off the roof at the top of what looks to Toby like quite a tall ladder, wearing only bluejeans with holes in the knees. Toby looks up at him, eyes filling with water in the thankless Californian sun. The light makes a fuzzy halo out of his sweaty hair.

Sam. Who he hasn't seen for six years now. Whose handwriting on his occasional postcard has been getting progressively more spidery with age. Whose skin is coated with sweat now, stupidly Adonis-like, at the top of a ladder.

"What," asks Toby, with as much sarcasm as he can muster, "Are you doing?"

"Toby! You came!"

At least he sounds excited, happy. Not appalled, awkward. Embarrassed. This is at least something.

"You're building a house."

"I'm refurbishing _my_ house, yes."

"Been at it long?"

"A while, yeah."

"Because it looks like you just started."

"Look," he says, grinning, "If you're going to insult me and I'm sure you're dying to get really stuck in on that one, we can at least go inside. I don't want to get sunstroke and an inferiority complex in one day."

Toby smiles. Sam grins.

"I can't believe you came."

"You asked."

"Yeah," Sam says, quietly, wiping his hands on the thighs of his jeans. "Yeah."

*

It takes a little while; it takes no time at all. Sam is clumsy and nervous, even in his own kitchen. He spills coffee grains, scorches his hand on the pot and nearly drops one of the two mugs. Toby can feel his own heart start to race a little faster with each misstep and he has to stop himself watching, staring.

"It'd help, maybe, if you put some clothes on?"

Sam turns as though Toby has slapped him, but smiles. "I, er, I forgot. Weird. Sorry."

_Not so weird_, Toby thinks as Sam disappears into the bedroom for a tee shirt. It's not like we haven't done this before.

*

They talk. The words shift the air, back and forth, breaking up the stillness, bringing on a storm. Toby pushes the photos of his kids across the table to Sam and Sam picks them up as he might a holy relic or a priceless Shakespeare folio. Toby watches his face. It thaws from absolute terror into guarded curiosity and ends, on the fourth picture of Molly and Huck wrestling for the giant stuffed giraffe Andy's mother bought them for their sixth birthdays, with a smile which looks utterly helpless. Toby searches his eyes for the man who once admitted that he was scared of all children below the age of eight (at which age, according to Sam Seaborn, child psychologist, kids magically transform into very short, very opinionated, unenfranchised adults before losing their charms again at around thirteen and a half; Toby had kept the mockery going for weeks on that one) and cannot see him.

Sam almost looks sad, wistful. Pushed up against the gaps in his life. His ambitions eroded into white spaces. Toby says:

"I didn't know you even wanted kids," softly.

Sam puts the photographs down on the table, pats at them with the tips of his fingers, like saying goodbye.

"I'm almost forty," is all he says.

"I was almost fifty," Toby says.

"Yeah. I guess. But you have a unique advantage."

"What's that?"

"A genuine attraction to women?"

Toby lets his gaze slip back to the table top, feeling a little like he has just been punched in the chest. When he looks back up, Sam's face is still. His eyes seem to have lightened with the sun and become almost translucent in this insipid, indoor light. They are the same blue as Huck's favourite tee shirt. He is staring out of the window now, down beyond the far end of the table and his profile is, for Toby, cast in shadows. He looks sad, but not defeated.

"Sam ... "

"It's okay. It's ... okay."

Sam slides the photos back across the table. His next smile is bright, brittle, thin as spring ice.

"They're beautiful," Sam says.

Toby can't look at him.

*

They walk the beach a little. Sam wears cutoff jeans and a white tee whose collar is coming away from the shirt. He is barefoot, tanned, his hair black against the sea. Toby goes as far as taking off his jacket and rolling up his sleeves. He can feel the sand gathering around his toes and see the water damage patching his shoe leather. Once or twice their wrists brush, or their forearms strike with a faint electric crackle. And Toby thinks _not yet not yet, I'm not ready yet_.

They compete at skipping rocks, and Sam always wins. Then they play a few rounds of 'name that speech', and Toby wins, most of the time. He lets Sam have the States of the Union.

Sam sits on the beach with his toes in the sea. Toby stands behind him, uncomfortable, for a few minutes, shifting from foot to foot and without any discernible grace in the sand. Finally he concedes and sits, a little way back and at a right angle to Sam. Gets out his notebook, starts to write.

Sam sighs. He leans back and where he had expected (Toby thinks) slightly drier sand he gets Toby's arm and shoulder and, when Toby raises his arm, his thighs. Sam closes his eyes. Toby lets exhales all the air in his lungs in one shallow, pulled-out breath and brings his hand down on Sam's forehead. He strokes it, cautiously.

"Toby?"

"Hmmm?"

" ... Nothing."

"All right."

*

The bed is really more of a mattress on the floor of the room adjoining Sam's. There are a series of small but significant holes in the brickwork but since that circulates air into the small, hot room Toby isn't feeling a pressing need to complain.

When they've said goodnight, awkwardly, at the door and Sam has quietened into what he is sure must be sleep, Toby folds his hands across his chest and completely fails to fall asleep himself. When he closes his eyes there are vivid streaks of colour - the beach that day, the swell of the tide around Sam's feet, the sun picking him out in silhouette. Toby opens his eyes and isn't surprised to find that silhouette outlined against the ceiling. He sighs, and turns his head.

There is a soft knock at the door just as his dreams are starting to carry him off. Sam opens the door with a creak.

"Toby?"

"What?"

"Were you asleep?"

"No, not really."

"Me either."

"I ... just. I just wanted to say thanks. For coming. It's good to see you."

"You should write me more often."

"I'll try."

"And come to New York."

"I get scared I'll want to stay. You know?"

"Yeah."

"And with the house and everything it's -- "

"Yeah."

"Anyway. I should ... "

"Sam."

He looks up from his bare feet, eyes glinting in whatever light there is left. His face is a little desperate, a little too full of hope, and Toby has always hated disappointing him, no matter what he has said in the past.

"Come here."

*

His mouth is warm, sleep-heavy despite his words, and soft. Toby touches it with his fingertips and when Sam opens his lips to them, he darts there quick as breathing, and kisses him. Sam's inhalation takes all the air from Toby's mouth and he feels light-headed instantly, even lying on his bed propped on one elbow and Sam on his knees by the mattress. Sam tastes of coffee unsuccessfully hidden by mint gum and Toby grins, a vulpine grin full of teeth and red tongue and lust gone feral from neglect, and bites at Sam's jaw.

His neck and jawline are covered with patchy stubble which scratches at Toby's lips; he rubs there with the round of his chin, where he knows the hair is shorter and sharper there, in recompense. Sam curses under his breath and fists his hand in the front of Toby's undershirt then, when he finds heat and short curls of greying hair and a frantic heartbeat there, flattens out his palm against Toby's chest. Strokes there, rubs his knuckles against Toby's breastbone and dips his head down to kiss Toby's throat.

Toby pushes him away, both hands holding his head. Sam's pupils are shot, black, hungry.

"You should really stop that."

He hadn't meant to sound so breathless, so helpless himself.

"You kissed me."

"Sam, we're not ... "

"Not ready."

"No."

"I'm thirty-nine years old, Toby, I think I can decide for myself whether I want to go to bed with someone or not."

Toby smiles a slow spreading smile. "That would have been a much stronger statement without the euphemism."

"Shut up," Sam says, smiling too. "I'm a little rusty."

*

They sleep badly in the only double bed in the house. Sam sprawls and Toby fidgets and cannot sleep for the noise of the thoughts in his head. He hates this house, this state, the beach and the sunshine. It is a six hour flight away from his children. Though Sam says now that he is happier out of politics, Toby knows he will end up changing his mind and doesn't particularly want to be the obstacle which stops him rising any further than a seat in the Senate.

Toby runs his fingertips up and down the length of Sam's side, ribcage to hips to thighs and back again. Strokes his belly with the flat of his hand and holds it still to feel the rhythms of Sam's breathing hold first a curve and then a plane. He rubs Sam's half-erection with his hand. He kisses Sam's shoulder. He rests his forehead against Sam's shoulderblade, and sighs.

*

"Don't go without saying goodbye," is what Sam says from the doorway of the kitchen, about five-thirty the following morning.

Toby is more used to being the one left behind than the one doing the leaving and he can't help the three or four quick steps he takes over to where Sam is standing, with his hands by his sides, waiting to be abandoned.

Toby kisses his cheek, his temple. He runs his fingers through Sam's hair.

"Write to me," Toby says, whispers.

Sam nods.

"Promise."

Sam smiles, defeated. "I promise."

Toby presses his mouth to Sam's, briefly, making his own promises, though he doesn't yet know exactly what they are.

"It's an early flight," Toby says.

"Yeah," Sam says, with a small nod. "I know."

*

_Sam --_

How long has it been since you saw New York in the fall? I hate to sound like a Woody Allen movie, but it seems like one of those years when something important is waiting to happen.

Huck devoured the Bradbury, and the Dickens, in a little under a week. He says send more. Molly detained Josh for about two hours while she got the ballerina story out of him. She says thanks.

There are a few things here I want to show you. And I refuse to send them in the mail.

There's a Senate seat opening up. And I told the kids in my classes that someone very famous was going to come and talk to them about what idealism really sounds like. Before I beat it out of them completely.

Come home.

\-- Toby


End file.
